JaRoet Outliner: initial release announcement

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Posted by jaroet
Nov 19, 2025 at 08:48 PM

https://github.com/jaroet/JaRoet-Outliner

I want to introduce JaRoet Outliner to you. A local-first Outliner that you can run by copying 1 file to a folder of choice and then start using it.

For the very first time you run it an internet connection is needed to download some libraries it uses (react, react-dom, dexie.js).
After that initial load everything is local and no internet is needed.

Being an outliner it allows you to store information in a bullet list style and it also has a Daily Journal function (hotkey is CTRL-J).

In the ZIP file of the release on the Github page there are 2 JSON files you can import in the app. A help-documentation.json that imports some documentation (read it to learn the hotkeys and more) and a demo.json file that imports an example outline to illustrate how you can use it.

I wrote a little more on the github readme file but I am still in the process of setting op Github Pages to have nice website.

As I am not a developer I created the app using Google AI Studio and the results were far greater then I expected. The app is far from being done but fully usable and being keyboard-focused I can navigate and work on my outline very easy and fast.

As we are all CRIMPers and we all like Outliner Software I invite you to check it out. I will keep working on it for my personal user but would love to hear if you tried it and how it went. Discuss here or in the discussions tab on the Github repo. Love to hear from you ...

JaRoet

Posted by cicerosc
Jan 6, 2026 at 09:57 PM

This looks very nice and I hope you will continue development. I am a big fan of Dynalist but for its web-focus, and if you could develop a work-alike that is oriented around local data that would be highly desirable.

Posted by jaroet
Jan 14, 2026 at 07:14 AM

Hello cicerosc,

Thanks for you kind words. I must confess that I moved on to creating another tool that has the same focus as JaRoet Outliner had and it is called JaRoet PKM. More info about that project is available at https://jaroet.github.io/JaRoet-PKM/.

JaRoet Outliner was a first POC I did with using AI coding support. That proved to work very nicely. I thought again about what I really miss in the PKM space and I ended up that having insight in the relations between subjects/notes is the most important part for me. Not so much the notes itself, although they are a core essential element but I want to know what relates to what. For keeping notes there are many tools available already.

So JaRoet PKM is just that. A tool that stores notes and the relationships to and from that note. The relationships are the core part and take up most of the GUI as you can see in the screenshot on the site I mentioned above. The notes have full markdown support also.

The state of JaRoet PKM is a lot further then JaRoet Outliner ever was. It has support for multiple ‘vaults’, has themes and I am currently working on integrating ‘attachments’ or links to files using attachment sources (like interwiki links but with the local filesystem).

The main reasons for building JaRoet Outliner are the same for JaRoet PKM. Free to use, no install needed other then unzipping a ZIP file, no cloud storage. I write about my reasons to build JaRoet PKM here ... https://github.com/jaroet/jaroet-pkm?tab=readme-ov-file#reasons-why-i-build-it

It is most likely that when you liked the setup of JaRoet Outliner you most likely willwill like JaRoet PKM.

I would love to get you feedback about JaRoet PKM also and whether you prefer the one or the other. or what you find missing in PKM for example.
I have not completely stopped with the Outliner but for now the PKM is my main focus (in the spare time I have) as it fits more in my personal daily use.

I use PKM now for about a month in my personal space (and work) and it is very stable in my experience. Just make sure you make backups (exports JSON) regular as the IndexedDB DB is linked you your browser history. If you clean that you also clean your vault data.

Regards, Jaroet

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